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Cemetery provides family history clues

Never underestimate a cemetery and the plethora of information it can provide in a family history search.


Doyle family graves. Courtesy Kym Warner
Doyle family graves. Courtesy Kym Warner

As an example, in Windorah cemetery, on the outskirts of of the tiny town of Windorah in outback Queensland, a row of three headstones bear the names of members of the Doyle family. Looking at them from left to right they are:

  • Catherine Doyle, died 29th January, 1936, aged 78 years with an inscription from her loving son John.

  • Adelaide Doyle, died 10th January 1899, aged 13 years

  • Timothy Doyle, died 26th February 1928, aged 80 years.


Going by the ages and dates of death, a family historian could pose the theory that Catherine and Timothy were husband and wife and Adelaide could have been their daughter. We know, at a minimum, Catherine had a son, John, who claimed to be very loving!


To be able to prove this theory, a search on the Queensland Births, Deaths and Marriages (BDM) will confirm, firstly that Catherine Doyle did die on January 29th, 1936 and also her parents were Alexander Abbey and Catherine Tully.


Using Catherine's maiden name, a search in the marriage section to Timothy Doyle will come up with no results. The next logical step is to search other states, as they may have married outside of Queensland. Each state has their own form of a BDM site and allows family members to research the indexes for free, although there is a cost to order a certificate.


Armed with the hypothesis that Timothy and Catherine were spouses, the next search was in the NSW BDM website (as it is the closest state) using a date range that accorded with their ages (eg. if Catherine died at 78 in 1936 then her birth year is around 1858. Assuming she married young (and I mean from 15 onwards), the date range for marriage could be between 1873 to 1888 or more).


Take into account that names may be misspelt or nicknames used. In the case of Timothy and Catherine, there is a record of them marrying in 1875 in Goulburn, but she is recorded as Kate. Just putting surnames, rather than Christian names may help in this example. To help confirm we have the right couple, a quick search of Catherine's parents found them marrying in NSW in 1851 and Catherine born around 1858 in Yass, not far from Goulburn. (Note: her birth registration was under the name Abby, rather than Abbey, and only came up when this name was used. A great argument for wild cards *. Also note, to get an exact date of birth, you would need to order the birth certificate, as the year is when the birth is registered.)


A good little hack when looking for any children Timothy and Catherine may have had in NSW, is to go to the Birth section of the BDM site and put in the family name, then just the first names of the parents, or at least one parent. I tend to use a date range starting before the marriage date, as accidents can happen!


In the case of Timothy and Catherine, the children they had in NSW were:

  • Timothy born 1875 (possibly the accident)

  • Elizabeth born 1878

  • Alexander Roland S born 1879

  • Catherine born 1880


Now, we still have the names of Adelaide and the loving son John, who may have been born in Queensland if that is where the family moved to. Taking into account that Adelaide died at 13 years old in 1899, we can assume she was born around 1886, so its back to the Queensland BDM site, where her death details are confirmed, as is her parentage. We have also found that her middle name is Florence.


Her birth details have not been so easy to find and there may be a number of reasons for that. If her parents moved out to Windorah, they may never have registered her birth being so far from official offices. This is the same for John, whose birth records also have not been discovered.


If BDM websites have been exhausted then there may be other avenues a family historian can search. Because our starting point was the headstones of the Doyles, the next step could be the Find a Grave website.


The Find a Grave website is a hub of contributors who visit cemeteries, taking photos and providing death and burial information and sometimes family connections and biographies.


A search of Catherine Doyle in the Find a Grave databases comes up with our Catherine and most of the information contained, confirms what we have already found out, with the extra bonus of family member connections, including spouse Timothy (which we knew) and children Timothy Herbert, Alexander Roland Sylvester and Adelaide Florence. There is also confirmation of her parents Alexander and Catherine, along with a list of siblings. This information may have been added by family members and can all be confirmed through a search on the BDM sites, as long as the information was registered. A click into Timothy Doyle confirms his father was also Timothy and that he had a number of siblings as well.


Now that the main bones of the family have been nearly all confirmed, (still missing BDM confirmation of John and Adelaide's births), we can start putting the muscle to the Doyle story. This is where Trove, the website that contains the collections from Australian libraries, universities, museums, galleries and archives, comes in.

Timothy Herbert Doyle, who fought in the Boer War. Courtesy Findagrave.
Timothy Herbert Doyle, who fought in the Boer War. Courtesy Findagrave.

A quick search of "Timothy Doyle" Windorah brings up a newspaper article where he has bought the Western Star Hotel in 1892. Another article confirms the death of his son, Timothy Herbert, at 29 years of age who had been in the Boer War and currently been in the police force when he fell ill and died.


A search of "Catherine Doyle" Windorah shows a line in The Queenslander Illustrated Weekly that her probate was granted after she died. It also states she was from 'Glenmurken'. Using various different spellings, we find an obituary for Timothy Doyle of Glenmurkan who died on February 26th, 1928. This matches with the headstone.


The obituary has a wealth of information about Timothy, that he was born in Goulburn and married Catherine at Crookwell, NSW in 1875 and was in the dairying and carrying business. It tells us he moved to Queensland in 1881, which aligns with the births of his children we discovered in the NSW BDM. There is even a list of his surviving children, which is where we find John.


There are now so many roads we can travel down to bring energy back to the lives of Timothy, Catherine and their children, as well as siblings and parents of the couple. And all started from three headstones in an outback graveyard



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